Great article. Sorry, more about Vick, but it's good stuff. Promise.

It's getting harder for me to write as much from home as before, so in the spirit of Slackertown USA, I'm posting this article by Howard Bryant of ESPN.com Again, its on Vick, but It's a great piece that I thought most of you would enjoy. I'm also including the link to the piece so ESPN can get some more hits, not that they need anymore.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=bryant_howard&id=3035358


Vick case has us confounded by the race issue again
Bryant

By Howard Bryant
ESPN.com
(Archive)


The letters sit heavy for weeks. They do not yellow, for in the paperless society people do not write the way they once did. They use e-mail, and it is now impossible not to be aware of the exact number of people who want to talk to you about him: from 255, when the federal government closed in on Michael Vick, to 974 later when it became clear he would plead guilty, to 2,208 on Sept. 20. That many from his first comments 'til today, 11 weeks of fresh air left before his Dec. 10 sentencing.

Michael Vick

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Michael Vick's case has come to represent more to America than a simple dogfighting arrest.
The letters are overwhelmingly from Americans, your countrymen and women, and you theirs, all of us blanketed in a word -- American -- that should say something more about us than merely location. A word that should provide a crucial, binding commonality, especially at a time when two wars are being fought.

Ostensibly, the letters are about Vick, about what he did and what he did not do. But they are really about us. Go beyond Vick. He doesn't matter anymore. They are about the intractability of race. They reveal the faces behind the American mask, the black and the white at stubborn impasse. Vick has provided us an unwelcome mirror, shown us who we are when we're held up close to the light, what we are really thinking when we walk past each other every day, each wearing the same uniform that says "America" across the chest. The uniform is the same, but clearly, after he exposed the raw nerves of race and class and privilege, Vick has shown us we are not all playing on the same team. We've always known this. But maybe we thought that by living better than our parents, at a greater distance from the bloody collisions that pockmarked their lives, we had made progress.

Vick shattered that illusion, telling us that despite undeniable progress in rights and opportunities, we don't understand each other at all.

The letters are there, so you tell yourself to go ahead, click on them, all of them, which have landed here over the past month. You don't flinch. You tell yourself to put them out there, as Malcolm X once said, "In a language we can all understand."

And then you deal with it.

Commonality

"Just maybe people will stop crying 'race' and understand right and wrong for a change -- when the ref fixed games the white people didn't say 'please understand where he came from or it's the culture.' It was wrong, black or white! I'm so sick that African-Americans can't separate right and wrong -- blame the white man or use their 'culture' as excuse -- like having babies and leaving (70%), not wanting to do well in school for that's 'being white,' not wanting to speak proper English, just wanting to be known for being dancers and athletes, and for calling women 'bad' names and using such foul language in their common talk. We're not animals and people know right from wrong."
-- A reader's e-mail

The Michael Vick Divide

At 6 p.m., ET, on Tuesday, ESPN will air a SportsCenter Town Hall Meeting Special in Atlanta to discuss the role of race in the Michael Vick case. Called "The Michael Vick Divide," the special features a panel that includes Terance Mathis, a former Atlanta Falcon and teammate of Vick; Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports columnist Terence Moore; former Falcon Chuck Smith; and New York Times sports columnist Selena Roberts, among others.

The Town Hall Meeting will be moderated by ESPN's Bob Ley.
Perhaps we don't care to go this deep, into the real space of communication, preferring instead surprise every time an O.J. Simpson moment tells us more about ourselves than it ever could about something as simple as a double murder. We expected, as a people, to be universal in our outrage that two people were killed. We were wrong; and when race took a hand, it all unraveled and we ended up here, running in place. Maybe it is the words, words like "justice" and "equality," that get in the way. They are clumsy words designed to fool us into thinking we live under the same umbrella. We don't. We are not the same. We are not equals. We do not begin at the same starting line. We accept this fact in virtually every other facet of our lives.

Michael Vick

Robin Snyder/Scoopt/Getty Images

Middle ground on the Vick case appears to be non-existent.
It's been hammered into our skulls that life isn't fair. Your little brother is taller than you. The boss' son has an edge on you. You went to a state school, and you're competing against kids who went to Harvard. Life isn't fair. We all understand, except when it comes to race. Only with race do we demand the myth that the scales are equaled, that everything we've done, everything we've been, has now become wonderfully balanced. When the myth of equality is disturbed, we recoil and then uncoil. Even when simple, obvious observations about life being unfair are raised -- black quarterbacks are judged differently than white ones -- intelligence immediately takes a holiday.

"Are African-Americans ever at fault for anything? Repression is over, debts for slavery is over. I cannot believe that people pay you for your racist BS. Vick did wrong, and he has to pay the penalty, just like anyone else would and should pay. Who cares what color he is? Don't play the race card because he … cannot make the correct decisions."
-- A reader's e-mail

Try to see what black people see. Stand on the platform at 59th Street in Manhattan and wait for the D train to the Bronx. Look at the Asian teenager, the one with the ubiquitous white iPod earbuds, clutching a bag of McDonald's in one hand and a hot coffee in the other. Look at the white father and son, probably heading to the Yankees game. Look at the black kids bunched near the stairwell, wearing their Yankees caps, and at three Latinas banging out too-fast-for-my-level Spanish as the A train -- the wrong train if you're going to Yankee Stadium -- approaches. That is New York City on Sunday morning, Sept. 23, 2007.

Then turn on television and watch "Friends," one of the highest-rated shows in TV history, and look at the New York being beamed out to the world from your country. It is a New York you've never seen, one so carefully devoid of the color that gives New York its special vibrancy, makes it unlike any city on Earth, and ask yourself how this is possible. Scrubbing New York so clean of its diversity, of its authenticity, does not feel like an accident. Ask yourself who made the decision to make your New York, the one you lived in and breathed, look like this? Yes, it's just a television show, but it's also a fact: The people being wiped out of the picture look just like you.

O.J. Simpson

Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

O.J. Simpson's double-murder trial brought race to a boiling point in American consciousness, and his recent arrest stoked those fires again.
Think about language, the term "the race card," and feel the sting of being slapped right in the face. The sum of another person's life experience can be reduced by your countrymen to nothing more than a tactic needed to win a game, the strategic equivalent of calling a fake punt when the time is right. To them, the life you've lived is nothing but a cheap gimmick, the desperation play in times of emergency.

Go back to a 1997 Vanity Fair essay on race by Fran Leibowitz:

"The way to approach it, I think, is not to ask, 'What would it be like to be black?' but to seriously consider what it is like to be white. That's something white people almost never think about. And what it is like to be white is not to say, 'We have to level the playing field,' but to acknowledge that not only do white people own the playing field, but they have so designated this plot of land as a playing field to begin with. White people are the playing field. The advantage of being white is so extreme, so overwhelming, so immense that to use the word 'advantage' at all is misleading since it implies a kind of parity that doesn't exist."

That's not a cop-out. It is not playing "victim" or the dreaded "race card." It is simply a fact. And we all have to live, and love and thrive in spite of it. And so many of us do.

"I was confounded to hear your apologist take on Vick on National Public Radio Aug. 25, confounded until I saw your picture on the ESPN Web site. Clearly, your blackness makes you unable to understand the deep pain this monster has caused people, such as myself, who consider their pet dogs a member of the family.

"This entire incident has caused me to question my lifelong pursuit to stamp out the latent racism taught to me by parents. Your comments make me sick, and caused me to view you as less than human.

"I suspect your blood runs as cold as his."
-- A reader's e-mail

Walk into Borders at Columbus Circle in Manhattan and think for a second about Cuba. People told me when I visited Havana that racial divisions there are as pronounced as they are here. They say light-skinned Cubans have more money and more political clout -- dark people dominate the island, but the light ones run the government.

But in Cuba, the music -- the son, the guajira -- brings people together. There is a national music that white and black Cubans play together. It is their bond.

Now go into the bookstore's music sections and see the many ways we are divided. Divided for ease, yes, but also divided for profit. In America, there is no simple commonality. Just ask the black kids who listened to rock or alternative or any other type of "white music." They paid a price, just as clearly as the whites who idolized hip-hop culture did when their peers -- at least where I grew up in Massachusetts -- would ask them why they listened to "jungle music." Their peers, black and white, made sure everyone stayed in their lanes.

Now go back to the television section, where there are white comedies and black comedies, with only the cash register in the middle. It is there, in the checkout line, not in the church or at the dinner table, where we all finally meet.

Michael Vick

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Is race an element in the reaction to Vick's court case? Of course it is.
You look at your country like this and you see that the reaction to Vick is a continuation of the divisions America has mastered. It makes sense, then, that something so seemingly simple as being offended that a person electrocuted an animal could become so complicated.

Malcolm X, another divider who learned to heal -- tragically, too late -- once said, "Show me a capitalist and I'll show you a racist." His reasoning: Eventually, at some level for all people, and corporations especially, the pursuit of revenue will ultimately collide with what's good for the whole. Ask Michael Jordan, the shoe king of the third world, or Phil Knight at Nike. They got rich together.

Justice

"If Vick was white, nothing would be done. What happened to Wayne Gretzky and his wife gambling and betting on hockey games? Go and get some information about that. So when you come to work tomorrow you wouldn't even have a job. You're not permitted to talk trash about the white people, but you can about Mr. Vick."
-- A reader's e-mail

Forget, if you can, the idea of equality. Like objectivity in journalism, it doesn't exist. The world is too big, individual experiences too sharp and unique, for common experience to belong to everyone. We didn't all have the same starting points, but we want to believe in that far-away ideal -- and justice for all -- because it is all we have. But accepting that ideal for what it is -- a goal, and not a standard -- might make it easier to talk.

Think about what it means to look the part, and you realize how hard it is to turn off the impulse. Barry Bonds needs to go away, for good. He is reprehensible, yes. But he is no more suspicious than Troy Glaus or Rick Ankiel, and you cannot compare the recent coverage of their stories to Bonds by reducing the issue to a discussion of Bonds' outsized stature against their relatively small celebrity. Ankiel looks his part, the feel-good part, and Bonds his.

In 1991, I exited a New Jersey transit bus in the suburban hamlet of Gibbstown in broad daylight, wearing a Temple University sweatshirt and sporting a yellow Sony Sports Walkman. Two police officers, hands on their weapons, appeared and ordered me to the ground.

"Where are you going?" they asked.

"To my aunt's house. She lives down the street."

"Where did you come from?"

"I just got off the bus. I'm a student at Temple."

"Well, we saw the bus go by, but didn't see you get off of it. We're looking for a guy who looks just like you. Armed robbery."

The police act like this. I know, because it happened to me. I looked the part. There is no equality, unless you, too, have been the guy with his cheekbone in the asphalt with a gun on you.

But once, you were, because that's what people on top do to people on the bottom. "Irish Need Not Apply." Grab a history book and read about how the immigrant Irish and Italians were treated by the police. Why do you think they call them "Paddy wagons"?

Maybe we have more in common than we think.

We said we wanted to hear from Vick. We demanded contrition. He had to feel horrible about what he did. The only human thing to do was show remorse. And then one August day, he spoke. The analysts talked about the victory for the justice department, the guilty plea gained so swiftly, so efficiently. It was a great day for justice.

Alberto Gonzales

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Why is it that the public hasn't demanded an apology from Alberto Gonzales, as it did from Vick?
On that same day, with all eyes on Vick, the country's No. 1 law enforcement official quietly resigned in disgrace without nearly the demand for contrition. Alberto Gonzales, the U.S. attorney general, abruptly stepped away from his office while at the center of a congressional investigation.

At once, race stared us down again. The black face, forced to say he was sorry for what he did; Gonzales, allowed to disappear behind kind words about his dedication from the president, who called him a victim. The highest law in the land -- the federal justice system -- was being investigated by the body that makes the laws, and nobody seemed to care or question a justice department's being corrupted at the highest level. Maybe this is why black people believed with so much force that Vick was being held to a higher, unfair standard.

They saw race. What they didn't see quite as clearly was class. Gonzales could have been Mexican-American, white or Clarence Thomas. What mattered wasn't his race, but his class. Gonzales was part of the power, the people who have more ability to corrupt the umbrella ideal of justice than a thousand Michael Vicks -- who clearly transcended class financially, but never socially -- ever will. These are the people who make the rules. They have the power. And they never, ever, have to say they're sorry.

Revelation

"Uncle Howard has to sell bro Michael Vick in his article of betrayal; because the pea brain bigots at ESPN would have it no other way. Every one of their moronic media people has to compete to see who is best at the good ole American pastime, Black lynching. Nothing like a good old fashion Black lynching."
-- A reader's e-mail

Don't be depressed by the predictability of it all. Take it in, a deep corrosive drag off a smoke. In 2004, a black male sold $50 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover Boston police officer within 1,000 feet of a school. At his trial, I was made jury foreman. He was guilty, and I read the verdict.

My uncle was upset.

"I would have never convicted him," he said. "Why? Because of all the times they put us away for nothing. I'd never convict another black man. Never. Let him go. Leave it to someone else."

Vick belongs in prison for what he admitted to doing. The details, if you feel anything at all, do not need repeating. You look for commonality, and this was supposed to be an easy one. You break the law, you pay.

Michael Vick

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Have we learned anything yet from the Vick case? And if we have, can we apply it to the next incident?
And yet, the majority of African-Americans who wrote say Vick has been unfairly targeted, and also believe that African-Americans offended by his actions have lost the meaning of being black. They've just been co-opted by whites.

"Hey Howard, go back to your white girlfriend and your white neighborhood with your white bosses and all be white together. We don't need you. Black people don't care about this. They're just dogs. You care about them because your white bosses tell you to care."
-- A reader's e-mail

The baseline of common decency -- that people simply are not supposed to behave this way and there are basic concepts of behavior we can all agree upon -- has disintegrated. Or maybe it hasn't even arrived. The letters tell you this is so. The exchanges between you and the black people who say you have contributed to the destruction of another black male grow heated and depressing. The question about how someone who murdered an animal could become so much more about black-and-white is being answered right here, right now. And you think about money, that everyone with enough talent in the right discipline can earn $1 million.

But as with the ubiquitous Simpson, we cannot reach the human layer of commonality, because we believe it doesn't exist. Not while race first defines who has value and who does not, who receives sympathy and who does not, and who goes to jail and who does not.

Maybe, you suggest to the readers, that the reverse is true. Maybe it is Michael Vick who let everyone down. Get past the clumsy words. We know that things are harder for us, you say, so you ask why Vick put himself in this position. He was the winner of the Great American Lottery, in which his talent trumped the intractable racial and class divisions. You tell them about what he did and what his crimes mean to you as a person. You tell them that believing Vick should pay for his crime doesn't mean you believe Tim Donaghy shouldn't pay for his.

You think you are making progress, and then they respond. They tell you that you are nothing more than a tool for your white bosses.

"I am a 53-year-old black man who grew up during the '60s civil rights era, the Black Panthers, and the Nation of Islam here in Oakland, Calif. My friends have called me an 'Uncle Tom' because I don't have any sympathy for Vick. This case is NOT about race. It's about right or wrong. Period. I never thought that in a million years that I would make this statement."
-- A reader's e-mail

You think about your older sister, the one so acutely attuned to even the faintest scent of racism or sexism. She's the political one, the radical; and yet, she is also horrified by Vick, and more by the blind loyalty toward Vick in the black community.

"Why are black people spending so much time protecting him?" she asks one evening. "And all these [people] want to say he's a victim. A victim of what? And what about all the black people who believe this is wrong but don't want to get beat down by their own? And what about the black people who didn't mess up their lives and need help? Who speaks for them?"

Rules
When it happens again, when the next story hits us like a flash flood and we're asking, dumbfounded, how race again became so prominent, remember that Vick has already provided the answer: It always was. Go back to W.E.B. Du Bois and read the first paragraph: "The problem of the 20th Century is the problem of the color line, no longer in opportunities, perhaps, but certainly in thought."

Take the umbrella words -- equality, reality, justice -- and throw them in the trash. Umbrellas are useless, because here, it always rains sideways. One day, maybe we'll believe in truths that aren't our own. Start from a new place. Maybe then we'll have a fighting chance next time.

Howard Bryant is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine. He is the author of "Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston" and "Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball." He can be reached at Howard.Bryant@espn3.com.

Baseball, baseball, baseball....

This has been, and will be, the most competitive season in baseball for quite some time. The argument couold be made that its the most competitive in history. Since the innovation of the wild card in baseball, there have never been this many teams competing for this many slots to play in the post-season. This has been a great - unless you are a fan of teams whose leads are disappearing like the Sawx, Mets, Milwaukee and Arizona - season if you like races that come down to the wire.

The Diamondbacks season looks like its on the verge of blowing up. They had a decent lead on the Padres for a while, but have since seen that lead dissapate. Chris Young has not been pitched the same over the last month and a half. He was a Cy Young candidate until then.

Milwaukee looked like they were the strongest team in the NL. They definitely have the best, young, slugging one-two punch in baseball in Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder. If Milwaukee ends up winning their division, I would have to give him the NL MVP. His numbers are just staggering (.291, 46HR and 111RBI).

Which brings me to the Mets. I originally thought that David Wright should win the MVP, but between Fielders numbers still growing, and Wrights' team losing the lead with much better talent around him than Fielder, it just may go to Fielder. Wright has had a great second half, but the Mets look dead the way they looked earlier in the season when it was just dismissed as they had the division in the bag and were coasting. It's time to stop coasting. A couple of numbers;

10 errors in two days.
John Maine ERA: Pre All-Star = 2.71 Post All-Star= 6.16
Reyes: Pre All-Star = .307AVG , Post All-Star = .261 with an OBP of .327

And surprise, surprise, Alou is injured again. More problems with his quads. On top of that, their money pitcher, El Duque, is injured and doesn't know when he'll be able to pitch again. They seemed to defeat one of their old demons in the Braves, but now have Phillies to haunt them every night. The lead is down to 1.5 games. This is not indicative of a world champion. The NL isn't the cake walk it was last year. We'll have to wait and see what happens because right now the question isn't whether they win the division or not, you have to be concerned if they will make the playoffs or not. They currently have identical records with the Padres who are in second place behind the Diamondbacks and, as stated earlier, are only 1.5 games up on the Phils.

The Red Sox still have the best record in baseball. But man there are a bunch of New Englanders waiting for the other shoe to drop. They had a 14 plus game lead on the Yanks and its now been whittled down to 2.5. After losing 7 of their top 9 starting pitchers, they have the best record in baseball for the last few months. The Sawx have done their part though, in that same span, the Sawx have the second best record in baseball. Despite this, the Yankees are only 2 behind the Sox in the loss column for the best record in baseball.

Any predictions? Real predictions Ernesto.

Is this article for real?

Is this article for real? If so, wouldn't this article reflect badly on Bloomberg? Since you are supposed to keep track of your employees and what they put "out there" for all to see? Since this is an editorial piece, there is one below it by, Dre.


Commentary by Michael Lewis

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- So right after the Bear Stearns
funds blew up, I had a thought: This is what happens when you lend money to poor people.

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing personally against the poor. To my knowledge, I have nothing personally to do with the poor at all. It's not personal when a guy cuts your grass: that's business. He does what you say, you pay him. But you don't pay him in advance: That would be finance. And finance is one thing you should never engage in with the poor. (By poor, I mean anyone who the SEC wouldn't allow to invest in my hedge fund.)

That's the biggest lesson I've learned from the subprime crisis. Along the way, as these people have torpedoed my portfolio, I had some other thoughts about the poor. I'll share them with you.

1) They're masters of public relations.

I had no idea how my open-handedness could be made to look, after the fact. At the time I bought the subprime portfolio I thought: This is sort of like my way of giving something back. I didn't expect a profile in Philanthropy Today or anything like that. I mean, I bought at a discount. But I thought people would admire the Wall Street big shot who found a way to help the little guy. Sort of like a money doctor helping a sick person. Then the little guy wheels around and gives me this financial enema. And I'm the one who gets crap in the papers! Everyone feels sorry for the poor, and no one feels sorry for me. Even though it's my money! No good deed goes unpunished.

2) Poor people don't respect other people's money in the way money deserves to be respected.

Call me a romantic: I want everyone to have a shot at the American dream. Even people who haven't earned it. I did everything I could so that these schlubs could at least own their own place. The media is now making my generosity out to be some kind of scandal. Teaser rates weren't a scandal. Teaser rates were a sign of misplaced trust: I trusted these people to get their teams of lawyers to vet anything before they signed it. Turns out, if you're poor, you don't need to pay lawyers. You don't like the deal you just wave your hands in the air and moan about how poor you are. Then you default.

3) I've grown out of touch with ``poor culture.''

Hard to say when this happened; it might have been when I stopped flying commercial. Or maybe it was when I gave up the bleacher seats and got the suite. But the first rule in this business is to know the people you're in business with, and I broke it. People complain about the rich getting richer and the poor being left behind. Is it any wonder? Look at them! Did it ever occur to even one of them that they might pay me back by WORKING HARDER? I don't think so.

But as I say, it was my fault, for not studying the poor more closely before I lent them the money. When the only time you've ever seen a lion is in his cage in the zoo, you start
thinking of him as a pet cat. You forget that he wants to eat you.

4) Our society is really, really hostile to success. At the same time it's shockingly indulgent of poor people.

A Republican president now wants to bail them out! I have a different solution. Debtors' prison is obviously a little too retro, and besides that it would just use more taxpayers' money.
But the poor could work off their debts. All over Greenwich I see lawns to be mowed, houses to be painted, sports cars to be tuned up. Some of these poor people must have skills. The ones that don't could be trained to do some of the less skilled labor -- say, working as clowns at rich kids' birthday parties. They could even have an act: put them in clown suits and see how many can be stuffed into a Maybach. It'd be like the circus, only better.

Transporting entire neighborhoods of poor people to upper Manhattan and lower Connecticut might seem impractical. It's not: Mexico does this sort of thing routinely. And in the long run it might be for the good of poor people. If the consequences were more serious, maybe they ouldn't stay poor.

5) I think it's time we all become more realistic about letting the poor anywhere near Wall Street.

Lending money to poor countries was a bad idea: Does it make any more sense to lend money to poor people? They don't even have mineral rights!

There's a reason the rich aren't getting richer as fast as they should: they keep getting tangled up with the poor. It's unrealistic to say that Wall Street should cut itself off entirely from poor -- or, if you will, ``mainstream'' -- culture. As I say, I'll still do business with the masses. But I'll only engage in their finances if they can clump themselves together into a semblance of a rich person. I'll still accept pension fund money, for example. (Nothing under $50 million, please.) And I'm willing to finance the purchase of entire companies staffed basically with poor people. I did deals with Milken, before they broke him. I own some Blackstone. (Hang tough, Steve!)

But never again will I go one-on-one again with poor people. They're sharks.

(Michael Lewis is the author, most recently of ``The Blind
Side,'' and is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The views he
expresses are his own.)


Editorial reply:

Michael Lewis where do I start you inconsiderate piece of sh@#. I will refrain from cursing at you and your editor for the following article.

Did it ever occur to you that in these past five years you made so much money you have a golden toilet to shit in, yeah it was too good to be true, exactly, I love your sob story about how you lose a piece of your fortune excuse me those that defaulted are living in the street or did you let them keep the houses they defaulted on, just wondering.

Those teaser rates, were not just teaser rates they were totally inappropriate products for those people to engage in. Interest only five year arms with a variable rate tied at the end, when fixed rates were at 40 year lows, remember you purchased those loans from brokers and banks. Did it occur to you that quite possibly the middle men you made very wealthy in the past five years did some of the screwing, maybe they should go and cut your lawn, wash or fix your car. Remember you all still have a home not these poor people who sometimes had a language barrier and the broker used his own lawyer to cut the deal and sign papers.

I would suggest if you are so rich and smart that you may have done some due diligence like take a look at the portfolio you were buying and realize why someone is paying 7% when rates were at 5% and you were making anywhere between 400-500 basis point spread on these poor people. Wow let me stick it to the poor even more with no vaseline and a baseball bat.

Did it occur to you that on many of these loan products especially the adjustable interest only arms with a variable rate that the product is designed for developers and contractors for financing and that using it as at temporary means for the poor would blow up at the end. Again this is all while interest rates are at 40 year lows. I see how you can still be whining about the poor people, maybe all you really want is for them to also give you a BJ while your counting the excess cash you made on them for the past couple of years.

Please do not write about subject matter you do not understand and are obviously very ignorant about. There are so many reasons why this happened the ones to blame are not the poor, the funny thing is if you went to college and remember cash flow analysis it says you analyze whether a borrower can pay a loan, in many instances this analysis was obsolete or was made up just to provide funding on the loan and remember the poor do not process these applications or submit it to your multi-million dollar hedge fund D#$K.

Dre

A bystander and observer of the many ill practices that were occurring in the past couple of years with banks and brokers (Your BEST Friends).

Sam Bowie...Where Are Thou? (And some other stuff)

Does this bite for Blazer fans or what? It appears that they may be snake-bitten when they select a big Center prospect high in the draft.

Zac and Nat, please don't think the worst just yet. Oden is young enough that he should be able to pull through this just fine. Look at Stoudemire. Amare has come back pretty well from his own micro-fracture surgery and hes the best example of how someone that young can come through this.

The question does always remain - especially given the way the last two years have gone for Oden - is Oden injury prone? I brought it up to Nat before the draft. He was injured in HS for one year too. This could all be a fluke, but injuries just seem to happen to some guys. Or, sometimes its just that one freak injury that starts the beginning of the end. Remember Bo Jackson? The guy seemed indestructible before he was dragged down from behind, which began the sad ending to a career that seemed to be going places that no one had ever imagined humanly possible. For the sake of Oden, Portland fans and the NBA in general, let's hope this is not the case.

Billy-Gate

I KNEW that was the only reason that the Pats were beating the Jets! I'm kidding of course. We all know that they have great players and people who have seen Bellicheck in action knows the guy knows what hes doing as a coach, but this HAS to take some of the luster off his reputation, no?

The league had apparently warned every team and specifically the Pats to not do this type of stuff. But, ever arrogant Bellicheck, decided to do it anyway with a guy pointing a camera on a tripod aimed directly at Jet coaches where a former Patriot coach just happens to now be the head coach. Doesn't that also have to take away some of Bellichecks "genius" rep too? It doesn't take an Einstein sort of fellow to say to himself, "You know, maybe I won't do it against the one guy who knows I do this". Again, arrogance is a hell of a drug.

Apparently the league will conduct a full-scale investigation into the Patriots tactics now that this has come to light. For the last couple of years, teams have been going into Foxboro with hard wired headsets - obviously not the QB's helmets - because for "some reason" their communications would cut out during crucial downs (i.e. 3rd and 7, 4th and 1, etc.). Teams have alleged that the Patriots are using some sort of short-wave device to disrupt communications. Furthermore, the league will also investigate to see if Patriot defensive linemen had audio recording devices installed in their helmets to record audibles from opposing QB's so that the team could later decipher them AND catalog them for the next time they play against one another. It sounds like pretty serious stuff. So serious in fact, I think the league should have fined them even more. I'm imagining that if the league finds that more of this stuff is true, the penalty could become more severe than the already hefty penalty of:

Bellicheck: $500,000
The Patriots: $250,000 and a 1st round draft pick, should they make the playoffs OR 2nd and 3rd round picks if they don't make the playoffs.

Does anyone else think that this is comparable to Bonds and steroids? And if so, do you think that the Pats in general and Bellicheck in particular will catch any real flak? Steroids is cheating. This is cheating. I've said all along that steroids is just cheating. Not the end of the world Anti-Christ sort of stuff that they have you believe. Just like spit-balling, corking bats, etc. If all the allegations prove true, I'm curious to see what happens since the Pats have been THE most successful franchise in football for the last decade just as Bonds was the best player in baseball and going for the biggest record in baseball.

Yankees vs. Red Sox

Yankee haters gather around, this could be a weekend for you all to crow about, or just stay silent for a little while longer. The Yankees lost last night despite a great pitching performance by, yet another rookie, Ian Kennedy, ending their winning streak at 7. The Red Sox are coming off a couple of rousing come from behind wins. The series is at Fenway and the Yankees swept them the last time they played AND since June the Yankees have the best record in baseball and the Sawx have the second best record. Good series. Beer anyone?

Any wagers on the series Zac?

Former Reagan Official Warns of Threat to Constitutional Democracy.

I know some of you think that I may be a little paranoid, but I thought that this article is scary if you think about it. If a former Reagan official is speaking out about this, its gotta be bad. What do you people think of this? And yes, I do believe that the Keennedy assasination was a conspiracy and i'm still not sold that we landed on the moon. I'm kidding about the moon thing.

This was brought to you by way of Josh's dad, Matt.

Impeach Now
Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy

By Paul Craig Roberts

counterpunch- July 16, 2007
Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a
year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state
at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for
dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are
triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency.
Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael
Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and
others suggest that Americans might expect a series of
staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near
future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush
administration will not bow to expert advice and public
opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is
that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular
position with false flag operations that can be used to
expand the war to Iran.

Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the
failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators
jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's
border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a
majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney
and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The
Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to
scare the American people and the Congress back in line
with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney
have fostered.

William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is
"praying for a terrorist strike" to save the party from
electoral wipeout in 2008. Chertoff, Cheney, the neocon
nazis, and Mossad would have no qualms about saving the
bacon for the Republicans, who have enabled Bush to
start two unjustified wars, with Iran waiting in the
wings to be attacked in a third war.

The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully to
resurrect the terrorist fear factor by infiltrating some
blowhard groups and encouraging them to talk about
staging "terrorist" events. The talk, encouraged by
federal agents, resulted in "terrorist" arrests hyped by
the media, but even the captive media was unable to
scare people with such transparent sting operations.

If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in
the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive"
at home, it will have to conduct some false flag
operations that will both frighten and anger the
American people and make them accept Bush's declaration
of "national emergency" and the return of the draft.
Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any
real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.

A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by
the captive media as a vindication of the
neoconsevatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of
which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that
are not American puppet states. Success would give the
US control over oil, but the main purpose is to
eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption
of Palestine into Greater Israel.

Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure"
were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar
Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago
Tribune that Americans have become complacent about
terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that
America will soon be hit hard?

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the
Hugh Hewitt radio show that "between now and November, a
lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by
this time next year, the American public's (sic) going
to have a very different view of this war."

Throughout its existence the US government has staged
incidents that the government then used in behalf of
purposes that it could not otherwise have pursued.
According to a number of writers, false flag operations
have been routinely used by the Israeli state. During
the Czarist era in Russia, the secret police would set
off bombs in order to arrest those the secret police
regarded as troublesome. Hitler was a dramatic
orchestrator of false flag operations. False flag
operations are a commonplace tool of governments.

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into
two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran
shrink from staging "terrorist" attacks in order to
remove opposition to its agenda?

Only a diehard minority believes in the honesty and
integrity of the Bush-Cheney administration and in the
truthfulness of the corporate media.

Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German
election, used the Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and
push through the Enabling Act, which made him dictator.
Determined tyrants never require majority support in
order to overthrow constitutional orders.

The American constitutional system is near to being
overthrown. Are coming "terrorist" events of which
Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the means for
overthrowing our constitutional democracy?

[Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate
Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and
Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor
of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com ]

The Top 10 (For Now) Debut Hip-Hop Albums of All-Time...

First off, I would like to give a big shout out to Big Is. Today, September 7th is his birthday and if you know Is, you know that the brother loves his hip-hop. So I could think of no better day than today to kick off this list.

Lets see if we can move on to something that we can joyously agree on (VERY sarcastic there): Music. Specifically, another Top 10 list, but after doing more research, we may bend the rules and make this a Top 15 list. I enjoy them, or at least, I enjoy the process of hammering out these types of lists, especially now with the new poll feature that this program features. I would like to start out today with the Top Debut Hip-Hop Albums of All-Time. This list is tricky. You may LOVE a particular artist, but their debut albums may not have been that good, like Public Enemy. I'm a huge fan of Chuck D. and Public Enemy, but "Yo! Bum Rush the Show" was not that great. In some instances, like Mobb Deep, the artist in question may not approach creating an album as good as their debut was ever again. Remember, next to this piece will be a poll on the side so please vote on the albums of your choice so we can see where we end up in terms of number of votes. After this is over, I would like to start building towards the Top Hip Hop Albums of All-Time.

The albums below, other than Paid In Full and Illmatic, are in no particular order. They're listed as I thought of them, except for these first two albums. I think there is no doubt that these are the 2 best debut albums of all time. Please don't bring me some noise about Lil' Wayne or Too Short even coming close to the caliber of Full and Matic. Nas and Ra are at the top of their games on these albums. Paid in Full was so dope and so far ahead of its time you could throw this on NOW and it would be the best album out. Fiddy would be squashed like nobody's business.

Speaking of 50 Cent... The guy is mediocre. Middle of the road. His first album, "Get Rich or Die Tryin'", was the most succesful debut hip-hop album of all time. Does that mean he put out one of the best debut albums of all time? In my opinion, no. The Spice Girls outsold anything that John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters ever sold. Does that mean that their albums were better works of art? Personally I don't think so and if you were to state otherwise I would have to seriously question your opinion in this matter.

Some of the albums I listed will have something written about them if I was moved to do so at the time, or if time allowed. I have a newborn, I don't have as much free time as before.


Eric B. and Rakim - Paid In Full

Nas - Illmatic

Kanye West – The College Dropout: Great debut album. He stopped producing tracks for other people, stepped behind the mic and hasn't looked back since.

Biggie Smalls – Ready To Die: Do I really have write anything about this guy?

Wu-Tang - Enter the Wu-Tang: The 36 Chambers – East Coast Hip hop made a return with this album. West coast rap at the time dominated mainstream hip hop. Gangster rap and the melodious, G-Funk, was leading the way back then. The Wu kind of made the rest of the country to pay more attention to East Coast rap again. Their use of "dirty" samples began a new style of production that was more gritty and raw and people in the mainstream took to it inspite of their raw sound.

KRS-One – Criminal Minded: The Professor schooled everybody and was and still is, one of the smartest brothers out there. He's still droppin' science to this day, even if tons of people aren't buying it.

De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising: Unique brothers who really spit tight, tight, rhymes over original hot trakcs. With socially conscious lyrics to boot. I miss the days when it was cool to be smart in hip-hop.

A Tribe Called Quest - People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm:
Dr. Dre – The Chronic : Yes I am including guys who go solo after appearing in a group. This album was so dope, you wondered if Dre had any great music left for other artists.

Cypress Hill – Cypress Hill: This was all you heard going into some parties when this album dropped. Unique sounding MC (A la Tip), dope, gritty production and phat beats makes this album a classic.

Snoop Dogg – Doggy Style: Is this a classic or what? Its SO mysoginistic, i'm embarrassed to say I loved this album. When I was rocking this cassette on my Walkman, I always turned down the volume on some songs. It was awful. But great. "It ain't no fu-uh-uh-uh-uh-uhn, if my homies can't ha-a-a-a-ave non".

Jungle Brothers – Straight out the Jungle: The creators (at least in the mainstream) of hip-house. Much to the joy of all the flexible short guys in the club back in the days. In spite of that, these Native Tongue members' first album was awesome.

Black Star – Black Star: We're still waiting for the damn sequel. But I guess this is better than Ocean's 12.

Mos Def – Black on Both Sides: Even though Mos is basically on this list twice, I couldn't leave this album off this list. Such a great album.

The Roots - Things fall Apart: I didn't want Dre to have a heart attack so I included this album, even though 120 people heard it, but I would be a bit of a hypocrite for going on my rant about sales not being reflective of good an album is.

Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of...: I'm not sure if this qualifies for the list, but again, happy birthday Is. This was an Is special. You guys get to vote on it.

Ice Cube - Amerikka's Most Wanted

Raekwon - Only Built for Cuban Linx

Big Daddy Kane - Long Live the Kane: I was a huge fan of Kane. Still am. Love his flow.

Slick Rick - Great Adventures of Slick Rick: An old skool classic.

Mobb Deep - The Infamous: I don't think they've been this good since.

EPMD - Strictly Business: Hard core beats and tight rhymes made me rue the day these guys split up. I always loved what they dropped on each album.

Dead Prez - Let's Get Free: I almost forgot to include these guys. Dope rhymes, socially conscious verses make them dope. "It's bigger than hip-hop, hip-hop..."

Big Pun - Capital Punishment: People forget how great this guy was. When you put on a Pun song you knew those first 16 bars were going to be some the fiercest, hardcore rhyming around. He put his all into that first verse, not to say that the rest of it he slacked, but he was spittin' fiyah, as the kids like to say.

50 Cent - Get Rich or Die Tryin': I am reluctantly including this album since Is submitted it. It was abundantly clear how mediocre I think the guy is. While Dre is not a GREAT lyricist either, I like his flow better than this guy and I think Dre should get a few extra cool points since he produced most of it himself.

Lil Kim - Hardcore: So far, only this and Lauryn Hill (still dont think she should be on this list) are the only females on this list. I wanted to include Latifah or MC Lyte, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Kim's critically acclaimed debut was also a big selling album.

Capone & Noreaga - The War Report: I'm going to listen to this album this week again. Is thinks this should be on for how hardcore it was and their lyrics. Interesting thing: despite being very hardcore, very few curses.

Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacfunkymusic: They put real hip-hop on the map in the dirrrty dirrrty.

LL Cool J - Radio: I forgot how good this album. Is reminded me. I went back and looked at the album again and i'm gonna be listening to it some more.

Run DMC - Run DMC
NWA - Straight Outta Compton: Not my style. Har hitting, raw lyrics speaking to the state of things in the 'hood. But I could never get with their flows. My faves from the group were Cube and Ren. Dre definitely grew as an MC since this album first dropped.

Brand Nubian - One For All: Another party album with tight rhymes. Grand Puba was a great MC. I know that this list is East Coast dominated, but even Drew said that Nubian was big in Mississippi.

The Pharcyde - Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde: Who can forget how trippy their music sounded at times. Great production, an original sound and some creative lyrics made this album dope.

Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt: Thank you Is. This album was on my original list. Problem with the cutting and pasting (its so technical). Great album. His best. I've been listening to it these last 2 days as research and have been lovin' it.

Now, really think about these albums before you vote. Really think about the lyrics that these MC's spit. The word play and the their flow. If anything, the music and beats should be the last or second to last thing you consider when you are voting. If you feel that there is an album that we should include (i'm talking to you Nat), please submit it and I will include it on the list. Nat is a fellow huge lover of hip-hop and always reminds us that we haven't heard enough from the Left Coast.

Please vote with your head and not your heart. One last thing, please limit your voting to 10 albums only.

Lets get back to a little sports (or yes, sprots)

Lets get back to a little less controversial topic so that all of our relationships with one another last just a little longer...

Baseball...

The Mets looked like they were really in trouble there for a sec after getting swept by the Phillies. I still wouldn't say that they are out of the woods yet even though they are 5 games up on the Phils. Although they did get some good news today with El Duque (Who the Yankees should have never let him go) coming through his throwing session pain-free. Carlos Delgado's hip is hurting him which will sideline him for about 10 days, which is particularly bad news since his bat was already slow before the injury and this may rob him of what little bat speed he has left, or at least, his power stroke.

The Yankees wasted a valuable opportunity to make up more ground on the Sawx when they lost 2 of 3 to Tampa. However, they were able to take 2 of 3 from the Mariners to push their lead in the Wild Card race to 3 games. Even though Mike Mussina is big inning on wheels, they should be able to hold off the Mariners for the rest of the season with the awful schedule that the Mariners have the rest of the season. I, personally, am more worried about Detroit making a run at the Yanks the rest of the way than the Mariners. Another one of the Yankee farmhands starts tonight. Ian Kennedy goes to the mound after an impressive first outing (7 innings, 3 runs allowed, 6 strikeouts). The Yankee farm system is legit. And, while noone was watching, they have the best record in NYC (78-62 to 78-61). Not by much, but by all the crap i've had to hear from Mets fans, you'd think they won something.

Football...

Yay! Football is almost here. Giant fans. This season may stink to high heaven for y'all. If they universally loved Eli then I would give them some more hope, but they don't truly believe in him where they can circle the wagons and fight for their leader. He's not a leader. He's a nice kid from down South. He probably makes a mean pulled pork sandwhich (easy Drew), but he's not a leader. Who knows? This may transform him into a leader because he actually showed a little fight after getting son'd....again.

The Jets are a hard team to call this year. Mangini did a great job of coaching the team last year and they made a HUGE pickup in Thomas Jones. It was a robbery. Swapping 2nd round picks to pick up a 1,200 yard rusher? Win for the Jets. However, I really think that the trading of Pete Kendall will really hurt the Jets unless they catch lightning in a bottle with Jacob Bender starting at G. The early reports on Bender have not been glowing though.

Basketball...

Allan Houston. He would actually be a great fit with this Knick team since they need an outside shooter and he was one of the best in the league when he was healthy. Just like his game on the court though, he doesn't know when to pull the trigger off the court (remember when he would disappear during a game for long stretches even though he was the most talented guy on the court?). He's still saying that he's 90%-95% certain that he's coming back? What the hell does that mean? Is he trying to guage the interest in him by saying that in the papers?

Hockey...

Just kidding. If you noticed, the above are all SPORTS. Hockey isn't a real, professional sport. We've established this already. All you Ruff-Buff people find that type of stuff elsewhere.

That's it for now.